


Scentless Apprentice

by MrsDurden420



Category: Once Upon A Time In Hollywood (2019)
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe, Depression, Destruction, Doggy Style, Enemies to Lovers, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Fiction, Fights, Freedom, Friendship, Gen, Guns, Het, Hollywood, Insomnia, Jealousy, Love, Love/Hate, Lust, Mash-up, Mayhem, Mental Health Issues, Missionary Position, Narcolepsy, Philosophy, Revolution, Rough Sex, Sex, Sexual Content, Sexual Roleplay, Smoking, Support Groups, Swearing, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-02
Updated: 2020-12-11
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:47:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 20
Words: 13,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22985020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MrsDurden420/pseuds/MrsDurden420
Summary: "He had a plan. To what purpose? To what greater good? In Cliff we trusted."-A Chuck Palahniuk AU reboot-Written in short chapters-None of the characters are famous-Warnings: Explicit sex, Violence, Drug use, Bad language, Alcohol- you name it, it is in here-Mature audiences only, please
Relationships: Cliff Booth & Rick Dalton, Cliff Booth/Rick Dalton, Cliff Booth/Sharon Tate, Rick Dalton/Sharon Tate
Comments: 22
Kudos: 45





	1. Chapter 1

**•PRESENT (LA)- Friday night**  
  
*Rick Dalton

I make napalm and blow up my condo.

Don’t ask. I don’t even remember doing it, but what is left of the bathtub looks like it’s been through an atomic explosion. I have a receipt in my pocket for enough cat litter to supply an animal shelter and there are five empty fuel tanks in the back of my car.

More than enough of both to gut a house.

More than enough to blast my Ethan Allen couch clear across the street and litter tiny shards of my dishes across the lawn. More than enough to sink slivers of my coffee table into the porch railings and launch my Henkle Harris dining room set high enough that half of it landed in the trees.

It fucking _must’ve_ been me, right?

I tell the police that it was the pilot light, the temperamental flame that regularly blows out and fills the house with gas all day long while I’m at work. The refrigerator must have kicked on.

I guess these things just happen.

They don’t fucking believe me.

-

I sit in a jail cell as I try to remember what exactly happened with this whole condo situation.

Every visit to this place is predictable. Same rotten, pissing drunks. Same crusted, catcalling girls. Same dismal fluorescent lighting that gives everything hepatitis. They toss me into a cell with another guy and my one-free-phone-call has been wasted on my good-for-nothing lawyer. It’s probably best that I never sleep anyway, because I sure didn’t plan on doing any of that here.

 _“Hey man.”_ A guy slouched against the wall nods at me. “Whatcha’ in for?”

“I think I blew up my house.” All the hair on my arms is singed and the back of my throat tastes like the tailpipe of a shitty old car.

“You _think_?” he laughs. “That’s the kind of thing you _do_ or _don’t_ know, for sure.”

“I don’t remember. I haven’t been sleeping and I have this problem.”

“A girl, or what?” he smirks and winks at me like I have her goddam name carved across my forehead. A flashing neon sign.


	2. Chapter 2

• **FLASHBACK**

My doctor is an asshole. Right up there with my good-for-nothing-lawyer.

I beg him for pills. Justify them with endless nights spent staring at the walls and torturous days spent trying to decide if I was a hologram. Most days, everything else is a hologram.

Life, as seen through a funhouse mirror.

I was desperate. I sit in his shitty little office and my mouth waters for little white pills. Throat _burns_ for pale, pastel blue. The blood-stained red of lipstick. 200 mg, 400 mg. Any dosage, any fucking color. I tell him that it’s impacting my job, my sex life, even though both are basically shit and none of that is from the insomnia.

He tells me to get a grip.

“You should come back tomorrow night. There’s a support group down in the basement for insomniacs, they might be able to talk some sense into you.” He hands me a pamphlet and leaves, the giant ass for brains with his squeaky orthopedic shoes and his cheap comb-over.

I throw the pamphlet in his trash can, but show up anyway.

-

The bottom level of the hospital reminds me of jail. Concrete floors stinking with bleach. Watered down coffee and doors that lock from only the outside. More of that hepatitis lighting. I join the little huddle of chairs in the center of a great big empty room with six other people who all look like ghosts. Pallid and practically see through.

Holograms. All of them.

I write a random name on my name tag, just to throw them off the scent.

Fuck that, I’m not signing up for this shit.

Randy, the big cream puff, hugs me and tells me to cry.

You’ve got to be kidding me, I didn’t sign up for this.

Randy used to be a model. Shoes, socks, underwear, you name it. Jack of all trades. Family themed shoots for major label catalogues before skipping out early to film bondage porn. The high life, until the insomnia hit. Looking like a ghost doesn’t go over well in the modeling business.

Before he knew it, he was popping any pill he could get his hand on just to sleep.

“I lost my jobs. My wife. She took the kids. We don’t talk,” Randy cries into my hair, crushing me against his chest. He’s taken up lifting weights to tire himself out and he looks like a steroid junkie. Grotesquely muscled and laced with throbbing veins. “I can only sleep after I’ve heard my muscles tear.”

Then suddenly, I let go.

When I pull away, there’s a blurry wet stain of my face on the front of his shirt and my eyes are burning.

Losing all hope was freedom.

-

I sleep like a fucking baby that night.

A log.

The _dead._

Like I haven’t slept in years and I go back to that ugly basement to cry on Randy every time I feel myself slipping.

Write that same random name on my name tag.

Drink their shitty coffee and listen to others complain about the miseries of the sleepless.

Deflect every time they ask me to join in. I’m not here to share.

I’m here to fucking cry.

-

And so everything is going great.

Until _she_ shows up and ruins it all.


	3. Chapter 3

Sharon _Fucking_ Tate.

The little liar. The heartless fake.

“She can’t sleep either.” Randy - the fucking cream puff - jerks his thumb at her and she smirks at me.

 _Yeah fucking right._ That girl is such bullshit. She probably forces herself to stay awake and tells you she does it for her ‘art.’ She probably paints those baggy eyes on every morning and drinks way too much coffee. Her bones stick out of her face like her skull is made of sugar and her skin is the color of watered-down strong brew.

But her blue eyes and blonde hair are bright and her mouth doesn’t sag the way everyone else’s does.

She can sleep. I _know_ it.

She stares at me from across the circle and gets to me before Randy does when we split for one-on-ones. Prances right over and rubs up against me like sandpaper. Smiles all pretty and throws her arms around my neck.

I choke down the shuddering urge to recoil.

She licks her lips and I imagine them on my cock, wet and plump. Then I imagine her naked. I can’t help it. Underneath the too-tight, too-much-mess of her clothing, there’s gotta be a decent pair of tits. Her pussy probably tastes sweet and I bet she’s the kind of girl who’ll just as soon rip your hair out as kiss you when she cums.

I _know_ she’s the kind that falls asleep afterward.

“I’m on to you.” I tell her.

“Oh, really?” Sharon presses right up against me and breathes into my mouth. Her eyes are sunken deep into bruised rose shadows and she blinks five times while I tell her that she doesn’t need this.

She is vacationing in the mouthwatering tragedy of other people’s pain for the pure daytripper excitement, like a kid in a fucking amusement park.

“A bad actress, that’s what you are.” I push her away, trying to put some fucking space between us, but she’s impossible to move. Sharon bats her eyes and her mouth curls up at the side.

“Spot on, Sherlock,” she purrs. “I’m just here for the next cheap thrill. And the coffee might be terrible, but it’s free.”

I just stare at her and shake my head in disbelief.

She then presses her face to my chest and huffs up a sham of a sob, a badly-drawn reproduction of the tears and the snot and the guilt they say we’re supposed to be letting go of.

I don’t cry.

I _can’t_ cry.

Instead, I let her dance me all around that room like we’re royalty at some high school prom. I barely resist the urge to pull her into a dark corner to give her a hard and thorough fucking. That or knock that _goddamn_ smirk off her face.

This isn’t love at first sight.

This is resentment at first glance.

-

I go home that night and I don’t fucking sleep at _all_.

I jerk off twice just thinking about her.

One sleepless week later, instead of going to the hospital, I blow up my condo.


	4. Chapter 4

• **PRESENT**

“I want to meet this girl.” Cell mate has blonde wild hair and sunken blue eyes, wickedly bloodshot, so he must be flying cloud-level on something really good. He’s wearing a yellow Hawaiian shirt with a white T-shirt underneath and blue jeans.

“No, you don’t,” I huff bitterly. “That girl is poison. Besides, I don’t think I’m getting out of here for a while.”

After all, I did supposedly blow up my condo.

“I don’t _know_. . . we might get out sooner than you think.” he says slyly, as though he’s in on a secret that I’m not.

As I’m listening to my cell mate talk, I turn my head and see that the guy in the cell next door is shaking his head and eyeing us in disbelief with his mouth hung a little open and I’m pretty sure my cell mate must be crazy.

I don’t ask him what he’s in for. From the looks of it, probably drugs.

“I don’t even know you.”

He holds out his hand, skin smudged, dirt around his nails. “Cliff.”

I don’t tell him my last name either.

“Rick.”

-

He springs us both in less than an hour.

Bats his eyes at the girl behind the desk and promises to fuck her later if she’ll just unlock the cell doors for us. I notice that she’s probably too young and naive to be here, probably some copper’s daughter working a summer desk job.

This guy is so far out of her realm that she’s punching numbers before she’s even nodding yes.

I wait out front and smoke two cigarettes while he pounds her in the back wall of the closet where they keep all the confiscated drugs.

He comes out smelling like cigarettes and sex.


	5. Chapter 5

Cliff steals a car. Not a nice car either. A beat up Cadillac the color of curdled milk, seats gone squashy as the upholstery leaks out of the cracked leather.

If you ask me now, I couldn’t tell why I got in that car with him.

He hurtles down the highway like a bullet from a gun and I’m trying not to think about what the fuck we’re gonna do. We have precisely thirty two minutes before the police catch on that something shady went down. I don’t know why they had him locked away, but I’m pretty sure I blew up my condo.

I still can’t even remember why I did it.

“You did it to prove something.” Cliff says and guns the engine.

“To who?”

“Yourself. Do you ever think about dying?” He flicks his cigarette out the window, a fire wash of sparks exploding behind us.

“A lot.” I say but he shakes his head.

“You shouldn’t. You shouldn’t waste yourself like that.” He sounds disgusted, like someone ran over his dog without stopping and left it all smashed and bleeding in the road.

“You can’t appreciate life without it.” I tell him and his face goes rigid, monstrous with rage.

“You really feel that way?”

“Fuck. My life is an inside joke and I’m not in on the punch line. Death would be a relief at this point.”

“You want death? You’ve got it.” Cliff growls at me and jerks the wheel.

Spasm, hard to the right.

The car swerves into oncoming traffic.

I scream.

A car blares its horn and barely misses our bumper, hissing as it hurtles by with mere centimeters to spare. Screaming. Wailing within inches of life and death.

“This is your life, Rick, and it’s _ending_! Every fucking second!” Cliff yells over the wind and the horns. A second car swerves to miss us and then another and it’s only a matter of time before we end up cat food on the freeway. I yell at him to stop, but he just keeps smoking and laughing and daring those other cars to hit us.

All I can see are headlights.

All I can hear is Cliff’s manic laugh.

All I can see are fiery explosions of metal and shrapnel sprays of glass.

Maybe I’m just thinking of my house.

“ _Think_ about it Rick. The special-snowflake lies you’ve been fed, it’s all just for show.” He turns to look at me and for a second I wonder just why the hell did I decide to get in a car with a complete stranger.

“Death,” he says. “Death is the true masterpiece.”

I lunge for the wheel and try to yank us back but he locks his grip and I’m just pulling on nothing.

“Only in death can you finally appreciate joy,” he shouts. “Or love or _lust_ or just fucking the _shit_ out of some girl because it feels so goddamn good. Death is the great leveler and life is no good without it.”

Cliff is preaching as though he has an audience. I look in the back seat but of course there’s no one there and through the back window I catch sight of the pileup building behind us. Damming the freeway with a warped wall of wreckage. Destruction behind us and turmoil ahead.

“We are the bright little center of the universe. Untouchable, infallible. Hurtling toward some sort of glory,” Cliff shouts again. “Everything else is just smoldering shit!”

I try to pull on the wheel again and Cliff glares at me, face flashing dark and light and dark from the blazing high beams of the oncoming cars. He sighs over the wind and finally twists the wheel, nearly breaking my wrist to speed off the freeway. Flies the wrong way up an exit ramp. Blows through two red lights and three stop signs, near disaster in every intersection before screeching to halt in a dark alleyway, killing the engine.

The silence is deafening.

“Was that my near death experience?” I croak, breathing hard enough to punch my lungs right through my ribs and Cliff just flashes me a sardonic smile.

“No, Rick. That was your near _life_ experience.”


	6. Chapter 6

We ditch the car and end up at a bar. Some small place called Marvin’s Tavern, down the street with a crusted hooker patrolling the pavement out front. Cliff struts in like he owns the place but he makes me order for the both of us.

He also makes me pay.

It takes six beers and thirty seven minutes for me to really begin to take in the vast pile of shit I was now in.

“I had it pretty damn good Cliff, but then I went and fucked it up. I bought that sofa, that dining room table with eight chairs, an overpriced television...” I ramble on to Cliff who is leaning his jaw on his hand and is looking less and less impressed by my words of sorrow.

That damn condo, sixty three square inches, too overwhelming to even look at. Even a thousand-thread-count duvet made by kids somewhere in China that started fraying the moment I opened the box. Even with my shitty job or my fucked up head or my unwavering lack of intimacy with anyone other than myself, I had my comfortable, expensive, boring little condo.

Despite everything else, I had that Ethan Allen couch. The Henkle Harris table.

My couch now looks like something they pulled out of Hiroshima and my table is somewhere thrown in the trees.

"I fucking blew up my condo." I say as I shake my head in disbelief after a moment of reminiscing.

"That's all just petty bullshit, Rick. Your couches and tv sets. Your clothes. Your precious, mundane human _crap_ ," Cliff huffs. "Stop your fucking moaning. It's time to _evolve_. You talk like that damn sofa fucking owns you. You should not be owned by your life. You should own _it_."

"You are not your condo." Cliff says and I obviously must hate my condo.

"You are not your job." Cliff says and I really hate my job.

"You are not your fucking khakis." Cliff says and I _hate_ my fucking khakis.

“The things you _own_ , end up owning _you_.” Cliff points at me before taking a sip of his beer.

That right there, just might’ve been the summary of my life up until now. Shaking my head, I take another sip of my own beer.

-

Cliff lets me get through another beer and four stinging shots of whiskey. He's been trying to give me a pep talk but he's the worst cheerleader ever.

“We are consumers. We're the by-products of a lifestyle obsession.” He says after lighting a cigarette.

I just stare back at him and think. And I must admit, everything Cliff’s been telling me right now is so undeniably and sadly true.

"You gotta shake this off, man. You're just wallowing in your own shit right now and your life is so much fucking bigger than that. You are going to waste." Cliff tells me.

"Shit, tell me something I _don’t_ know." I grumble into my beer.

Cliff shrugs. "Ok. Did you know that if you mix equal parts of frozen orange juice concentrate and gasoline, you can make napalm?" he says like it's an obvious fact.

"Are you _serious_?”

“Yea partner, you can make _all_ kinds of explosives, using simple household items.”

Why does that sound so familiar?

There’s a brief pause between us.

“Cliff, you’re the most fascinating person I’ve ever met.”


	7. Chapter 7

We drink until I'm nearly falling off the stool.

I throw up when we finally call it a night and step out into the parking lot out front. The cool outside air hits my face, too hot and too cold.

It's been so _fucking long_ since I've slept.

Cliff stands across the lot and smokes while I empty my stomach, acid burning ragged up my throat and coming out nuclear orange. He flicks the butt away after I've wiped my face and eyes me like he’s studying me.

He probably is.

He then walks up to me and says "I want you to hit me in the face."

"What? No." I roll my eyes.

I might be drunk, but I'm not that drunk.

"Just do it."

"I can't fucking do that. I'm not gonna hit you."

"Oh c’mon man, stop being a damn pussy!" He starts bouncing on his toes like a boxer.

"Why the hell do you want me to hit you?"

"I just -" he pauses. "I just need you to do it. _Just do it_." He bounces some more and demands again. "I don’t wanna die without any scars. Hit me."

This guy’s fucking insane.

"I don’t know about this, Cliff." I shake my head.

"Fine." Cliff rolls his eyes and swings.

He clocks me in the jaw hard enough to make me see stars and spring that shitty filling right out of my molar. A cheap mercury version and I spit it out in a bloody gob between my feet.

" _Shit_! You fucker!" I yowl and clutch my jaw, lunging at him with my own fist.

I hit him hard in the left side of his neck.

"Ah! Fuck, why the neck, man?" Cliff is half laughing and groaning through his pain.

Fucking psycho.

"Yeah, and how the fuck did you think I felt!" I hiss.

He looks really happy for half a second before he comes at me again.

This time he punches me in the stomach.

“Ah!” I clinch my teeth through the pain and crouch down on my knees, still gasping for air.

And although this feeling wasn’t exactly pleasant, I suddenly felt a hint of relief and freedom, from who knows what. Similar to that feeling of when I first let go and cried in that shitty support group with Randy.

I felt _alive_.

"You ok, Rick?" Cliff pats me on my shoulder.

"Goddamn that shit really hurt." I tell him. "Do it again."

“Haha, no it’s _your_ turn now. C’mon!”

We continue to fight.

-

When we finally decide we’ve had enough, we sit on the curb of the parking lot, casually smoking and sharing one last beer that Cliff put in his jacket from the bar.

Both our faces look beat up.

I take a sip and tell Cliff. “We need to do this again sometime, man.” before handing him the rest of the bottle.

“You’re damn right.” Cliff chuckles before taking a sip.


	8. Chapter 8

Cliff lives in a fucking shit hole.

Buried in an unfriendly forest, dark as fucking night. It was probably a nice family home at some point but whoever took care of it had left a long time ago. I was almost sure Cliff was squatting.

The house smells musty like something caught on fire and crawled under the couch to die. The carpets are gone, wallpaper torched and peeling. There's something that looks like a bloodstain on the floor in my new bedroom. The water runs brown, which explains his ever present grime and careless, worn-through clothing. Only half of the lights work.

But as shitty as this house may be, I’m just glad Cliff is allowing me to live here for now, since I basically have no where else to fucking go.

I sit at the kitchen table and hiss through the sting of rubbing alcohol against my broken-open skin while Cliff roller skates through a fine carpeting of pebbled glass from all the broken-out windows in only a black bath robe and some weird pink bunny slippers.

-

I go to the hospital basement out of habit.

It's Monday and nothing has really changed but everything is different. Now, I'm not sleeping because of the pain in my side and the fact that my face feels like the steaming hot end of a nuclear missile. Now, instead of shitty coffee, I seem to drink my own blood. The constant drip-drip-drip down the back of my throat.

I spot Sharon loitering out front before the group meets to wallow in their collective torment. In twenty minutes we'll be asked to pair up and _normally_ I'd sob my face off between Randy's pumped up pecs, but I can't do that with _her_ here.

I can't do what I _want_ to do, which is grab her and shake her hard enough to rattle her brain. Scream in her lying, smoke-filled face.

_You heartless fake._

_You wicked, manipulative girl._

_Fucking actress._

"Why are you doing this?" I ask her instead.

"What the hell happened to your face?" she snaps, puffing on her cigarette. She's not even listening to me, just eyeing my mouth and running her tongue across her lips, between mouthfuls of smoke. My face is a fucking train wreck. Cliff damn near broke my cheek and definitely gave me a black eye. I'm wearing a clown mask of blue and red bruises.

"You don't need this, not like I do." I tell her. I _want_ to tell her that it makes her a fucking phony, once again, but instead I tell her the only thing that makes sense anymore.

"You sound like a junkie." She blows smoke in my face and I wave it away.

"Why do you keep coming back?" I ask her and she ignores me again.

"Is that _your_ blood?" She points at me with the smoldering end of her cigarette. I glance down at myself, a constellation of bright red splatters against the fabric, and shrug.

"Some of it."


	9. Chapter 9

We start to go back to the parking lot every week, Cliff and I, and every week there are more of them. One. Then two. Then twenty. White collar business suits and blue collar grunts. All of them itching to find release with their fists buried in someone's face. None of them alone in their chaotic flailing and broken bones.

Sooner or later this thing moves to the Marvin’s Tavern basement, with help with the manager, George. We decide to call it exactly what it is... fight club. Cliff makes up the rules. He orchestrates every meeting. Names himself the ringleader of this fucked up little circus we're putting on.

No shirts. No shoes. Two guys to a fight. If you knock someone out, the fight is over. If it's your first night, you must fight...

And his favorite rule of all, _don't fucking talk about it._

I still can’t sleep well, I barely go to work any more and I don't go to the support group.

I just engage in beating up strangers or getting my ass beat, for the hell of it, to let out all my frustrations.

Cliff never fights. He just stands off to the side and watches.

-

"What’s _this_?" My boss for the construction company I work for, Sam, is wearing black, which means that today is Wednesday. His tie is wine red, which means that it's the second Wednesday of the month.

I smile at him, sure that my teeth are also stained in wine red. My lip is freshly busted and I'm having trouble swallowing. Half of my face is throbbing hot enough to scald and I'm certain that at least one of my ribs are fractured to the point of disintegration.

If my body is the hourglass, I am the unstoppable drainage of sand.

He comes up to my desk holding a piece of paper. Cliff's rules. The ones he said no one would remember and asked me to type up. The ones that came out in a glob of meaningless symbols strung together in chrysalis haikus.

The kind that wither up and die before they've even unfolded their wings.

"What have I told you about wasting company resources?" He asks me and I snatch the paper away and I tell him that it's nothing, a personal joke.

I can't fucking _talk_ about it anyway.

"You look like shit. Are you on drugs?"

“Of course not Sir!”

I _wish_ I was though. If I was, none of this would be happening right now. I hope that one day my boss will show up on Friday night so that I can beat the fuck out of him. I can practically taste his blood when his cheek bursts open and can almost feel the gummy give of his bones under my fist.

He's not even old enough to be my father, but he talks to me like I'm ten.

"Pull yourself together, kid. And go wash the blood off your face, you're freaking out the women."


	10. Chapter 10

It’s Friday night.

And I lose another fight.

_Same old, same old._

The guy who works the graveyard shift of a liquor store beats me into the ground like an abandoned rag doll. 

He's an overachiever and I leave with a broken nose.

-

I groan in pain as Cliff is setting my nose.

Every time you try to fix a broken bone, the resistance is magnified and by the time you get to the third or fourth or even the fifth reset, everything fights against you. I can hear the cartilage grind painstakingly back into place, echoing through my eardrums.

We both suddenly look up, as the harassing sound of knocking bulldozes through the house. I wave Cliff away as I hold my bleeding nose and head for the door.

"Stay here." It's the first time I've ever told him to do something and not the other way around. He scowls at me.

"Why?"

"Just _do it_ , Cliff." I bark and try to gulp back the blood that's pouring down my face.

I open the door.

Fucking _Sharon._

I don’t even know how the hell she found out where I’m staying.

"Are you ok?" She asks me and I glare at her as much as my broken face will allow. I could tell her I crashed my car. Fell down the stairs. Slammed my face into the wall enough times to crush the bridge of my nose and stain my face with blood red bruises.

"What are you doing here?" I ask her instead.

"You didn't even come inside last time. Did you find someone else to cry on, sugar?"

"Fuck you, I found something better."

"I can see that. Tell me." She leans in the doorway, trying to peer down the hallway.

I know for a fact that Cliff is eavesdropping around the corner wearing just boxer briefs, my old slippers, and a pair of kitchen gloves.

Covered in my blood.

"I can't talk about it." I tell her, which is the truth.

"It's another group, isn't it? The insomniacs weren't pathetic enough for you? What is it this time?"

"It's exclusive. Not just _anyone_ can join." I hiss and try to choke down the overwhelming urge to push her off the porch. Cliff doesn't have a rule about girls, but I'm pretty sure I could make one up if I needed to.

"You look hot, all busted up." She eyes me for a moment, licking her lips and scanning my face in all its twisted, swollen glory. "Come back. It's not any fun without you."

"I'll think about it." I slam the door in her face. Not as hard as I want to. Cliff is standing in the hall when I turn around. Still gloved and bloodied and he asks the very question I hope he won't.

"Is that her?"

-

The next day, I don’t know why, but I show up at the hospital.

"Well, well, _well_. Look at what the cat dragged back in." Sharon drops her cigarette to the sidewalk and grinds the smoldering butt under her toe, again with the lip licking. Again with the tormenting. "My little pep talk must have worked."

Cliff is taking a piss in the alley and I have 24 seconds to get rid of her.

"I'm not here for you."

" _Sure_." She slips me a smile that is part sweet and part caustic, burning around the edges. As she flounces away Cliff appears from the alley with a laugh under his breath, still tucking himself into his pants. He's been wearing the same jacket for days now. A blue jean jacket, roughed up enough that it looks like it's been put through a meat grinder.

"That girl likes you." he says, watching her disappear through the doors.

"No she fucking doesn't." I huff.

"This is gonna be _fun_." Cliff rubs his hands together like we're going to an amusement park and he's planning which roller coaster to attack first. Which thrill he's going to stay away from. Which addiction he's going to ride over and over and over again until he's sick with dizzy exhilaration. I know that he'll fixate on Sharon. She's the thrill that hoists you high in the air then drops you face first into the concrete on a broken bungee cord.

"You have to stay out here." I tell him.

"Why?" He looks put out, pissed off that I'm once again telling him what to do. "You really _do_ like that girl."

"It's not about her."

He doesn't believe me.

I leave him sitting on the front steps and wander into the basement trying not to look suspicious. Trying to to cover bruises. Trying not to move my tongue too much. The hole in it still hasn't healed and for days I’ve been eating food mixed with drops of my own blood. Sharon just chain smokes and twists her hair with her fingers. Eye fucks me while Lynette sobs over her own hair, which has started falling out. Lynette looks like the skeleton of Dakota Fanning if you put her in a dress and too much lipstick. Walking around the party smiling extra pretty at everyone to disguise her slow crumble.

I glare at Lynette so I won't glare at Sharon.

Sharon usually loiters around the coffee bar and scowls at anyone who comes near her during the one-on-ones. I make a break for her when she invites me with a tempting finger. She whirls out the door and I almost follow, but Randy grabs me.

Presses me into his tits and starts to cry into my hair.

-

Randy cries forever.

I don't come home until midnight.

As I walk to my room, I see Sharon's dress crumpled like a broken bird on the staircase.

She probably tripped over Cliff on her way out of the hospital so I spent most of the night listening to them fuck each other down the hallway.

I delete Cliff. Insert myself. Drift off with my face in her pussy, sleepless dreams of eating her out. Dig my face into my pillow and wake up to my sheets stained with blood from my broken open nose.

It's the first time I've fully slept in a month.


	11. Chapter 11

The next week, out of the thirty guys at fight club, I tap Cliff.

And I _instantly_ regret it.

I'm just so fucking angry, it makes me stupid. I'm so _sick_ of listening to him yell her name when he fucks her, it blinds me. The single nights of sleep slaps a flimsy band aid over a big, black hole and makes me think I'm stronger than I actually _am._

I don't even land a hit.

He almost practically kills me.

Puts a fresh hole in my tongue. Leaves my bloody wet faceprint on the asphalt. I can taste my spinal fluid burning the back of my tongue as he digs my face into the dirty basement floor. He gives me one last elbow to my back before he gets off me and stalks off through the silent and shocked crowd.

It's the first time since our initial fight that he's actually participated.

As I pick up my bloody face from the ground, I wonder, what the fuck are they so shocked about? It’s not the first time I’ve gotten my ass beat here.

It takes four days for my bruises to turn yellow and for Cliff to show back up again.

-

At home, I knock on Cliff’s bedroom door and he answers it naked.

His dick is _huge._ Big the way improbable porn is big. It's standing straight up and staring at me, wet and dripping from the tip. I look over Cliff's shoulder and Sharon is moaning into the mattress with her ass in the air.

Her eyes meet mine for a split second before Cliff is laughing with the nearly manic one he saves for fight club.

"Care to join, Rick?"

"No," I huff and pull my eyes off Sharon splayed out in his sheets. I've been listening to him plow into her for two hours now. "But can you try to keep it down? _Shit_..." I mutter.

"I don't fuck quietly. Neither does she. _You_ should know that." Cliff says before he slams the door in my face.

“Who the fuck were you talking to?” I hear Sharon ask Cliff as I press my ear to wood.

Before I know it Sharon starts moaning even louder than earlier.

Out of curiosity, I peep my eye through the keyhole and I see Cliff sink his face into Sharon’s splayed pussy. Wincing through her scream when she cums around his tongue. He licks her clean before he flips her on her stomach and thrusts his dick up into her, telling her that her pussy is the tightest he's ever felt. His fist grips her hair, yanking her to her knees as she moans loudly again. He whispers filth into her ear and rubs her clit as he thrusts. Her nails scrape up the length of his thigh and I yank my eye from the keyhole and decide I’ve seen enough.

I go to fight club alone, _pissed off_.

There's a first time for everything.

-

I go to Marvin’s Tavern without Cliff and beat the fuck out of some kid. A younger guy named Jay with light brown hair and green eyes.

I press him into the floor hard enough to scrape his cheek and dip-dye his emerald greens in blood. I repeatedly punch him, trying to indent my fists in his pretty, pretty face.

I wanted to destroy something beautiful.

I let them pull me off him only when he's damaged enough.


	12. Chapter 12

The next morning, Sharon flounces into the kitchen, too pale and too lively for my taste. Her hair is snarled and her lips are swollen. There’s two small red hickies on her neck. Costume jewelry punctures made by Cliff’s mouth.

"Good morning." she purrs at me and pours a cup of coffee. I glare at her behind her back and stab my cereal with my spoon. Her dress is pale pink taffeta and wilted tulle, stained and coming apart at the hem. Cliff probably found it in some dumpster somewhere. It looks like the last dregs of someone's cliched prom night.

"Your dress should be burned." I tell her.

She scowls at me. "Your mood swings give me whiplash."

"Sounds like you were thoroughly fucked last night." I grumble around my spoon, her moaning still echoing through the big empty rooms of my brain.

_Yes Cliff! Fuck me Cliff! Harder Cliff!_

She probably smoked while she sat on top of him, flicking ashes off the bed and grinding away with practiced ease like she'd been doing it since junior high.

 _"You would know."_ Sharon hisses and storms out the door, taking our last un-chipped coffee mug with her. 

I remember staring at the dead jellyfish condoms in the toilet this morning long before I flushed them. The shitty, sweating palm of my hand. Hating myself for picturing her mouth around me instead of my fingers.

It felt so real, I was half tempted to ask her if we'd done it before.

Cliff appears the moment Sharon is gone.

"Why is she still around?" I ask.

Cliff eyes me carefully. "At least she’s trying to hit rock bottom."

 _I hate that fucking bitch._ Without Cliff, she would be nothing. Without her, Cliff would actually show up at fight club more often and wouldn't be so fucking ruthless when he does. He'd nearly killed me last Friday and the hole in my tongue has barely healed.

"That girl is something else though, Rick. You've got some fucked up friends."

"She's not my friend. She's your _toy_ ," I spit. "I thought we’d be like partners in crime but I guess I need a pussy and a pair of tits for that position."

"What the fuck are you talking about?" Cliff snaps at me.

“Just forget it man...” I shake my head.

Just as I stand up from the kitchen table to make my way back upstairs, Cliff quickly grabs my hand and pins it to the table between us.

He leans over and places a wet kiss to the back of my palm. Then he pours what looks like fucking acid on it and it burns like hell is supposed to burn. Right through my skin and into my blood. Through my blood and into my bones. Volcanic pain. A hiss of smoke in the air as my skin starts to bubble.

I try not to think of chemical burns. Try not to think of searing flesh.

_I am not here._

"Don't do that Rick. Come back to the pain. This is the greatest moment of your life, the _beginning_. Everything up until now has been meaningless.” Cliff hisses into my ear.

_I am in Brazil._

On some tiny island surrounded by water. Sweet, clean, fresh water and there is so much of it, _endless_ , but not enough to mask the smell of my skin starting to sizzle. Cliff’s kiss is branding itself into the back of my hand, acid scorching my flesh. An entire forest fire, concentrated into an inch of space.

"The pain is the only thing that you have now." Cliff grips me tighter when I try to pull away. _I have cool blue water._ "It is the only thing that proves you are actually alive." _I have clean, cool air._ "The pain is your salvation."

_I am in Brazil and the breeze smells like salt._

"Look at it!" Cliff demands. _Yells._ I try, but my eyes don't work. I'm crying down my neck, the collar of my shirt gone damp. "You can cry, but your tears will only make it worse."

I can smell myself, sweating, pissing. Barbequing.

_I am not in Brazil._

"Can you feel it? The pain?" Cliff asks.

_I am not in the ocean._

_"Yes."_ I groan.

_I am being burned alive._

"Good, because one day, you _won't_ be able to feel it anymore. You won't be able to feel _anything_ anymore, so you better fucking appreciate it _now_." Cliff leans over my charred hand and takes a solid whiff off the charcoal steam rising off my flesh. He splashes a large bottle of vinegar over it and the fire is gone. There's a swollen swipe of skin, purple at the edges, puckering the back of my hand.

"You fucking asshole," I gasp, still burning in pain. "You have no idea how bad that hurt."

Cliff smiles slowly and holds up his hand, baring the back of it with its own puckered scar.

"You wanted it, you got it. You're one step closer to hitting bottom."

-

Jay isn't so pretty anymore, thanks to me.

His lips are twisted off to the side, face misshapen where the bones didn't fuse back together just right. He came back this week and the stitches haven't even had time to set, still pulling at his skin to hold it all together, a jagged black line from his hairline to his chin.

Cheeks so swollen he can barely see. Nose so big he can barely breathe.

He taps Cliff for a fight and I wonder if I damaged his brain as well.

Even though I think he won't, Cliff agrees. It's quick and dirty, literally. Over before it's begun. Nothing but the sad, flat packing sound of Jay getting more than he can take. The snap of stitches and the splitting rupture of teeth. Cliff lifts him upright and throws him against the back wall of the basement while Jay laughs and laughs and laughs through his beating.

"You crazy motherfucker!" Jay howls, spitting blood. "You really are just as nuts as they say!”

Cliff looks up from Jay and turns to us with a death glare and his fists tightly clenched.

"What's the first rule of fight club?" Cliff asks us and I can feel everyone around me shuffling their feet, mumbling the answer. "That's right. You don't fucking talk about it. Any of it. _Ever_."

Someone in the crowd behind me mutters a hail mary.

Behind Cliff, Jay is pulling himself up to his feet. Small bruises on his torso are now visible. I could tell Cliff went easy on his face since it was already still badly fucked from our fight last week.

Cliff pats his shoulder and ruffles his hair before hauling away.

"See you next week boys."


	13. Chapter 13

Cliff is in the bathtub, which has seen better days. Someone must have tried to cook meth in here and everything went horribly wrong. It might explain the smell and the bathtub barely holds water. The enamel is burnt to a heavy grain sandpaper grit.

When your ass is made of stone, I guess things like that don't bother you.

I sit on the toilet and start to clean the blood off my knuckles. I got tapped after Cliff left and I did alright, but I was put in a chokehold at the end.

"If you could fight anyone in the world, who would you fight?" I ask him. I don't want to talk about what happened anyway. I have no idea where Jay is, but I'm pretty sure he's somewhere close.

"McQueen." he says.

"Steve?"

"Who else? His niece, Neile , she wanted to fuck me. He was _not_ happy about it." Cliff isn't cleaning anything, just sitting in the warm water with his skin steaming. There's still a bunch of dried blood caked around his mouth.

"When was this?"

"Early seventies, I think. They divorced a couple of years later. Christ, that woman was beautiful. . ." He sounds nearly indulgent before he looks at me. "Who would _you_ fight?"

"I'd fight Sharon." I reach into my mouth and touch a tooth which promptly falls into my lap, gooey with blood and the still-writhing tentacles of tendons.

"That's fucked up, partner. I think she'd beat the shit out of you."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence." I pick the tooth up and contemplate shoving it back into place, but set it on the sink instead. "That girl is bat shit crazy."

"She's bat shit crazy alright... about _you_."

"She doesn't like me." I shake my head, still prodding at my jaw. There's a loose tooth on the bottom. It wiggles in it's socket, bolts of sharp pain through my jaw. 

I couldn't kiss anyone right now, even if I wanted to.

-

I go to work with a hole in my tongue that just won't stop bleeding, lacing my teeth with red. I can swallow a pint of blood before I start to feel sick. I know this, because I've done it. I write epic diatribes instead of punching numbers and make copies of them while I prod the bruised bones of my face. No one talks to me anymore and I wear a mask of raccoon eyes to keep them away.

Cliff does nothing but fuck Sharon and show up to fight club.

-

Cliff makes a beautiful brunette girl piss herself in an alleyway.

Pulls her from behind the counter of a convenience store with a gun to her temple.

"The fuck are you _doing_?" I ask, staring at the crack of her cleavage that's heaving with every gulp of air. She's crying and he's holding her still with a fist through her hair, her neck craned awkwardly. He eyes her pumping jugular for a moment before throwing her to her knees and she sprawls into the gravel, whimpering.

"This is Francesca." Cliff strolls around her, still pointing the gun at her head but he's talking to me. "Francesca here has the kind of body even _I_ get weak over. Perfect tits, nice ass . . . _baby_ face." He tucks the barrel of the gun underneath her chin and forces her face to the sky. Her makeup is running clear down her neck but he's right. She looks fresh and clean and brand fucking new. Not like Sharon. Not like me or Cliff.

"Why are you working in this shit hole, baby?" Cliff _sounds_ sweet, even though I know he isn't. She blubbers, but nothing understandable, clutching her hands together in a delicate lace-up of fragile bones and gooey tendons. I can't even appreciate a girl anymore without thinking about how the human body can be broken.

"What did you want to be, when you were a little girl?" Cliff tries again.

More frantic stuttering.

"The question, Francesca, is _WHAT DID YOU WANT TO BE_?" Cliff snaps, voice echoing over and over and over as he stands back and pops the safety, gun pressed firm to the spot between her eyebrows. She's shaking but he's stone still and I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that he'd actually do it. Sharon must’ve rubbed him raw tonight and he's unstable at even the best of times. I don't trust him worth a damn and he looks too trigger happy for my taste.

"Answer him!" I shout at her. She doesn't struggle, doesn't even try to run, just glances around wildly like someone might be able to save her.

There's no saving anything from Cliff.

"A model." she finally whimpers. Cliff clicks the safety back and tucks the gun into the waistband of his pants.

"Francesca, you have exactly five weeks to resume that dead goal of yours. I know where you live. I know where you _work_. I will check on you, and if you fail . . ." He leans down right into her face and bares his teeth at her, flashing his pearly whites.  
"You won’t _live_ to see another day."

He hauls her to her feet, gives her a sharp swat on the backside and she goes off like a shot into the night. The farewell wave of her hair and a trailing fog of sobs.

"Fuck, Cliff." I watch her go and wonder if it could be that easy to just outrun him. Probably not. "What the fuck was that all about?"

"Imagine how she feels right now. The adrenaline and the joy and the fear. The relief that she's alive." Cliff stares after her, nearly salivating. "That was the most important moment in her whole trivial life."

"Her near life experience?"

Cliff winks at me. "You're catching on."

Cliff then throws me the gun and starts to wander off back to the car.

There were no bullets loaded in the gun.

And I now realize, he had a plan. To what purpose? To what greater good? In Cliff we trusted.


	14. Chapter 14

Cliff and Sharon take the gun to bed with them that night. I can hear them using it to assault one another for hours.

_On your knees, you dirty fucking bastard._

_Take it all the way, you filthy slut._

_Yes. Fuck. Just like that._

_Shit. Shit. Shit._

When old dusted cracks from the ceiling of my room downstairs from theirs finally rips through the wall and falls down the foot of my bed, I delete Cliff. I insert myself and dig my dick out.

Roll onto my stomach, burying my moans like bodies into the pillow.

-

I don't go to the insomnia group. I just stand outside and wait.

I tell myself it's not for her, but I can't think straight when she comes fluttering by. She waves her cigarette hand at me and all I can see is Cliff’s mouth. The curl of his lips and the steaming chemical burn.

"What the fuck is that?" I grab her hand then drop it immediately, stomach roiling with disgust. Her skin is mangled, freshly burned in a delicate swipe across the back and I can't believe he did it.

Gave away his scar.

To _her_.

"What, am I not special enough to be in your club?" She glares at my hand and I shove it in my pocket to hide the scar. Sharon pushes herself right up against me, all tits and lips and big bloodshot eyes and purrs like an overfed cat. "Haven't seen you in a while, dollface. Did you get your fill of me last time?"

" _Please_. Like you would ever give me what I want." I almost laugh in her face. What I _want_ is her in my bed and not his. What I _want_ is to kiss her until our lips crack. Blood blends. Bones break. To fuck her and then let her beat me senseless. The urge is almost too savage to contain.

It makes me feel more like Cliff than I ever have before.

-

There is someone standing on the porch when I come home. Randy. With a fresh black eye and a tear in his lip. I watched a new guy beat the fuck out of him last night after I visited the outside of the hospital.

He doesn't acknowledge me, even though I stand right there and stare at him. Neither of us have been to the hospital basement in a while and I can't even remember how to cry.

I give up and go inside and find Cliff in the kitchen.

"There's someone on the porch." I tell him.

He sips from his coffee cup and adjusts his dick in his robe. "He's been there all day."

"Tell him to fuck off. Shit's creepy."

"I can't. It's part of the process."

"What process?"

"He's here to be reborn. He wants to be part of this."

" _This_?"

Cliff tips his head toward the back of the house. "The shed."

"What the fuck is going on in the shed?

"Jay is out there."

" _Jay_?"

" _Whatever_ ," Cliff shrugs. "He's just the first."

"The first of what?"

"We're building an army, Rick."

"What do you mean, an _army_?"

"We gotta take fight club up a notch," Cliff shrugs again. "This is the dawn of a new era, Rick. We are ushering in the future, can't you see it?"

He waves his hand in the air like I'm supposed to see what he's talking about. I see nothing.

"We have front-row seats to this rebellion.  
Enjoy the show."

"You can't create an army of burnouts, Cliff. What are you going to do with all of them? They'll run rampant."

"Exactly."

-

I let the phone ring in the living room three times before I decide to answer it.

"Is it you?" _Her_ voice hits like a gallon of acid wash to the face.

"Who were you expecting?" I know she's calling for Cliff. I also know that he's off somewhere ushering in some sort of destruction. Blowing something up. Tearing something down. Guerilla warfare waged with teeth and rage. It comes off him so strong that when he's close by, I get drunk on fury.

"I need you to come over." she demands.

"Why?"

"There's something wrong with my tits." She doesn't sound panicked or fretful. There's no fear. No dread. She sounds bored. Unsurprised, like she expected this.

"They seem alright to me."

"Just come over and look at them, will you?"

Cliff might be gone right now, but he gets bored easily and I'm sure that his fledgling army of two won't keep him occupied for long.

"I'll be there in fifteen minutes."


	15. Chapter 15

Sharon’s apartment is a shit hole. Just like Cliff's, but Cliff’s is so empty, drained and lifeless. Carcasses of furniture and years' worth of neglect and abuse, piled in the corners like dirt. She has shit _everywhere_. Colors so bright my head spins. Collections of crap and piles of all those ridiculous clothes. She's in a kimono that looks like it's been stolen from someone's dead grandmother. Frayed and stained, just like all the rest of her pointless junk. Moth bitten blankets and yellowed curtains.

Beautiful from afar. Fucked up on closer inspection.

"So, what's up with your tits?" My mouth is dry and I try not to glance down at her chest.

"They just feel weird." she shrugs.

"And you think _I'm_ going to be able to tell the difference?"

She scowls at me and stomps three steps to her full length mirror, ripping off her sash and throwing it aside. It flutters to the carpet and I'm behind her before I even know it. An inch of space between us. Watching through the mirror as she lifts her hands to the back of her head. The kimono falls aside and her nipples are puckered, pointing right at us. Not pink like I hoped, but she does have nice tits. I fold my arms around her and put my hands to her skin, cupping them first for good measure. She doesn't stop me, just squirms into my hands and rubs her thighs together as I begin to feel around.

Warm flesh, washed watercolor grey, all rough edges gone.

Like she's been rubbed down with fine-grained sandpaper.

The freshly burned scar from Cliff’s chemical burn on the back of my hand is the only thing that distracts me. When I pull my eyes off our mirrored reflections, its unwelcome twin is right there in front of my face.

The lesion across the back of her hand like a fucking announcement. Territorial pissing.

 _Property of Cliff_.

"They feel fine." I wrench my hands off her and stalk to the other side of the room, trying not to get my feet tangled in her clothes, certain that they'll swallow me. She blisters head to toe in rage and follows me until I've got nowhere to go but down. My ass to her bed, which is the last place I want me and my dick to be.

Especially when she's this naked.

She plants herself right between my legs and pushes the robe off, flashy black lace wrapped around her crotch.

She moans and I snap out of it.

I open my eyes and my lips are pressed to the skin near her hip.

Right over one of Cliff’s hickies.

" _Fuck_." I pull away and she goes for the button and zipper on my jeans, frantic fingers and heavy breathing. She kisses me and her mouth tastes like a gasoline fire. Like napalm. I have visions of my house exploding when she pushes her tongue between my teeth. I yank her underwear to her knees and find her acid slick with my fingers, burying three of them and kissing on her thigh. She feels different than I expected. Very soft. The kind of soft that makes every bone ache from the inside out.

I try to treat her decently, since Cliff obviously hasn't. Try to soften my mouth and hold back my teeth, but she wants none of that.

" _Come on_ ," she whines. "Mark me."

"No." I shake my head and grind my jaw around something soft and vulnerable so that I don't tell her to shut the fuck up and just enjoy it. I stand up and pull my open jeans and underwear off and spin her around and when her palms hit the mattress, I shove myself into her, hoping to silence that infuriating mouth. Spread her cheeks to get a better view and pound.

Nothing but my ragged breath and someone's manic heartbeat.

"You know you want to." she taunts, desperately bucking her hips against mine and I scowl at her mess of hair. I get a good handful of it and gently yank her head back. Plant my scarred hand in the sheets next to hers and bend down to get near her ear.

"No. I _don't_."

"Then fuck me like you mean it!" she spits.

 _Fuck it then_. If she wants some Cliff out of me, then that's what I'll give her.

I grunt when I shove. Pant as I ram myself home and Sharon turns her head to nibble on my arm, but I don't even feel it. Every muscle from my lungs down constricts and I cum, shallow and sloppy and spilling out of her as I pull free. She growls, frustrated, and falls to her back on the bed. My dick aches like she set it on fire.

"That's the best you can fucking do?" she scowls. Her fingers slip between her legs and my knees give out.

From this angle, I can see everything. I watch her for about a minute or two.

The gleam of her skin. The thick white drip puddling to the sheets beneath her ass. I want so badly to be inside of her again that my body's heating up and I find myself hard again for the second time. I quickly remove my long sleeve shirt over my head before pushing her hand out of the way and placing my erection to her entrance and pushing in. I give in and finally suck roughly on her neck like she wanted me to. Then I place both my hands near her head and continue to pound her over and over again while letting my head fall back completely.

"Yes! Fuck me! Fuck me hard!" Sharon moans and I hiss as she scratches her hands all the way down my back to my ass, enjoying the slight pain and pleasure while the headboard to the bed starts viscously banging into the wall with _every_ thrust I make.

-

I go home after Sharon kisses me goodbye and I can't help but replay the events that happened tonight in her apartment over and over again in my head.

I gave it _everything_ I had and fucked her exactly the way she wanted me to do.

Just like Cliff.

I don't tell him about Sharon, but he knows.

He ignores me.

Let's Jay and Randy recruit more guys to the house from fight club that night without even batting an eye.


	16. Chapter 16

Everyday, there's more of them.

Soon the extra rooms in the house are carpeted with guys who are preparing to engage in Cliff's homework assignments, numerous acts of vandalism all over the city. As for the targets, they are the rich, capitalist, consumers, corporate materialism...

Cliff _really_ built himself an army. An army of _space monkey's_ is what he called them.

I find him in the field out back, watching all the guys reconstruct it while giving them a speech. This whole club has turned into an experiment. Participants turned into lab rats with the parking lot as a petrie dish.

 _"You are not special!"_ Cliff screams.

_"You are the same decaying organic matter as everything else!"_

_"Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need!"_

This isn't fight club anymore.

This is demolition club.

I stand beside him and notice some men running quickly in and out of the shed.

"What the hell are they doing in the shed _now_?"

"Making napalm. _Obviously_ ," Cliff shakes his head as though I'm wasting his time. "Gasoline and kitty litter, makes for some powerful stuff."

"How do you know how to do that?" I can taste the caustic stench of it, the corrosive wipe off the back of your throat that's almost like unquenchable thirst. Cliff turns to look at me, smudged skin glowing in the moonlight with fierce eyes.

"Because you do."

_I don't remember telling him that._

"What are you going to do with it?"

"I haven't decided yet."

"And the guys?"

"Burning off their fingerprints."

"With what?" _Certainly not napalm._ Cliff smiles to himself before turning it on me, terrifying in its morbid pleasure and extra enthusiasm. He looks downright fucking pleased.

"Lye."

The moment the word lye slips from his mouth, the back of my hand starts burning.

"This is getting too fucking out of control. I don't think you know what you're doing."

Cliff narrows his eyes at me and they're dark. Darker than they've been for a long time. "I've been doing this for longer than you think."

"How long?"

Cliff lifts an eyebrow at me. "Since around the time you first started going to the support groups at the hospital. Right after you met Sharon. I started three clubs around that time."

Oh yeah, I remember telling him that story when I met him in jail.

"Jesus, how many _are_ there?"

Cliff shrugs. "There's some in Washington, Oregon, Nevada. The newest is in San Francisco."

"Newer than this?" I wave my arm at all the guys working in oblivion. It felt like Cliff and I had been rushing headlong into the burning eye of god since the moment we met and I could barely believe he had time for anything else.

"Their inaugural session was last night. Decent turn out. Looks promising."

I shake my head, stupid and scratchy eyed. Cliff rolls his eyes and looks bored with me. Snaps his fingers in my face and makes me blink. " _Focus_ , Rick. I was just there."

"When?"

"Yesterday. Don't you remember? I stayed at the Hilton."

Loud cheering and clapping from the house suddenly distracts me from my thoughts and I walk over there to see what the fuss is all about.

I reach the living room and stare at the tv showing a CNN breaking news broadcast of the outside of a credit card building on fire in the shape of a smiley face.

 _Must've_ been a homework assignment.

"What the fuck did you guys do?!" I yell in disbelief.

They all just look stare at each other for a brief moment and go back to laughing hysterically.

"Sir, if you erase the debt record we all go back to zero, Sir." Wayne, this new guy says.

I turn my head and see Cliff standing there in the hallway watching as well. We lock eyes for a moment before he smirks and turns away into the kitchen.

I've _got_ to put a stop to this.


	17. Chapter 17

She doesn't pick up until the fifth ring. Not until I've just about given up on her.

"Is it you?" she exhales and my insides boil.

"Who were you expecting?" I fume.

Sharon sounds half in the bag and fully pissed off, which is normal for her. "The wild guy who fucks me senseless and tells me that I'm the best fuck he's ever had. Obviously, I got the _other_ one."

"I have to go out of town for a while. Just . . . stay away from the house while I'm gone, ok?"

"Like I'd go there. That place is a shit hole."

"I'm not interested in your opinion. I'm telling you what to do."

"You are the worst thing that has ever happened to me." she hisses.

"You sure about that?" I think about the puckered smear across the back of her hand that exactly matches mine. Think about her chewed-on chandelier earrings and ruby red chokers, gaudy gifts from Cliff.

I can't tell her that there's an army of Cliff’s little servants in the basement.

Can't tell her that they're mixing napalm and burning off their fingerprints. I can't tell her the future plans of destruction they have for the city. Can't tell her that I let Cliff beat me into the ground yesterday, right into the kitchen table.

I can't tell her that I'm afraid of what he'll do to her.

"Listen, I'll call you when I'm back. Just stay low until you hear from me."

"Why are you doing this?" She asks the one question she shouldn't.

"I think I like you."

_I'm such a fucking jackass._

"Not love?" she giggles.

"Don't push it."

-

I fly to San Francisco.

Eat their prepackaged airline meal and throw it up in the tiny airplane bathroom, practically standing up. Stumble into the Hilton and throw myself against the counter. My nose won't stop dripping blood and a black eye is visible on the left side of my face from my fight with Cliff, but the guy in company polyester doesn't even blink.

"Good evening, Sir," he says blandly. "What can I do for you?"

"I'm looking for a club." I cough and scatter some small flecks of blood across the counter.

"There are several down on Bedford. Clean girls, but I didn't tell you that." The guy licks his mouth, probably tasting hooker on his tongue. I shake my head, the bones in my neck grinding.

"Not that kind of club. I'm looking for the kind you're _not supposed to talk about_."

His eyebrows rise clear into his hair. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"I think you do." I growl, trying to sound like Cliff and it must've worked because he gulps.

"You might find what you're looking for at the Diamond. It's a bar on the North Side. Friday nights, Sir." He looks nervous and tugs at his tie.

 _That's more like it._ "Last week, there was man here. Probably looking for the same thing I am. Name of Cliff. Mid twenties, blonde hair, blue eyes."

The guys' eyebrows tuck together momentarily before he smears a bland look across his face and shakes his head deliberately. _Fucking servant._

"You haven't seen him?" I hiss.

"No," he says. And then he winks at me. _"Sir."_

-

The Diamond turns out to be a fucking disaster.

I arrive when the club is in full swing and some guy is beating the fuck out of a scrawny kid with a mullet. The kid is making strangled noises and trying to fight back, but he's failing. I storm into the middle of the crowd and yank them apart. Pull strength from nowhere and toss the one with the fists aside. The mullet is moaning into the pavement and when I roll him over and grab his hand, he has a kiss scar.

A space monkey.

They're _all_ space monkey’s and they're all looking at me like I'm insane.

"Who's the head around here?" I ask and all of them shuffle, silent fucking space monkey’s with burned off fingerprints and lip-stained scars on the backs of their hands.

No one comes forward.

They all just stare at me.


	18. Chapter 18

The first thing I do when I get back to LA is call the house from a pay phone outside of the airport.

Wayne picks up the second ring.

"Wayne, I need you to go check on Sharon."

"She's fine, Sir."

"Don't fucking call me that!" I yell and some old lady glares at me from the curb. I tuck my hand around the phone and hiss into the receiver, my head throbbing like an overheated engine. "Where is Cliff, have you seen him?"

"Cliff is . . . _unavailable_." He finishes slowly, as if it's a question.

"Put him on the phone."

"I can't do that, Sir."

"Will you quit fucking calling me that! My name is Rick, ok? Rick!"

"Whatever you say. _Rick_." Wayne answers.

-

The second thing I do when I get back to LA is attempt to call Sharon myself again to ask her if we've ever even had sex. I might have made that whole tit encounter up. I might have made _everything_ up, really, and I'm just so fucking lost right now, I _have_ to consider it.

"What the _fuck_?" She sounds looped out on liquor and weed. Mouthy and pissed off and probably just fucking gorgeous, as usual. In some tattered dress-up fantasy, chasing liquor with dick and nicotine.

"Have we?" I ask.

"You are such a little shit!" More screeching. "You love me, then you hate me, it's _infuriating_. If I told you I swallowed a bottle of pills, you wouldn't even care."

"Did you?"

She exhales heavily into the phone, her breath shuddering. She's probably choking herself with the curly cord of her phone.

"I'm coming over." I say before I slam the phone into the machine hard enough to crack the plastic in my hands.

-

I don't give either of us time to think.

I walk into Sharon's apartment and take out all of my anger on myself in front of her.

Storm in the door and hit myself as hard as I can. I crash through the coffee table and grind my hands into the glass-covered carpet to stand again. Fling myself into the bookshelves and take down most of them, before punching my face twice.

"If you're doing this to prove something, it's not working." Sharon stares down at me and that's when I finally look at her, blinking away some blood that's pouring down over my forehead from a cut.

So fucking beautiful, the way a car accident is beautiful. The way the colorful explosion of your house blowing up is beautiful. Her neck is still patterned with his hickies, but now they're mostly faded.

I look further down and stare at that damn scar on her hand.

"He changed you." I sigh.

" _Who_ fucking changed me? If you want to talk about last week, you don't have to talk in third fucking-"

"He doesn't love you." I tell her, pulling myself from remnants of her bookshelves.

"Is _that_ what you're calling it? You have serious problems." She's so right and so beautiful and so fucking infuriating. I want to plow her into the wall and get my mouth onto every inch of her body but all I can think about is burying my fist in her face. Or mine. Ending this torture.

"I know I've been a little up and down lately." I finally stagger to an upright position, leaving a constellation of bright red stars on her carpet.

"Up and _DOWN_?" Sharon has screeches. "Jesus christ, Cliff! You're Dr. Jekyll and Mr. _Asshole_."

"What did you just call me?

She rolls her eyes. "I can't believe I'm actually having this conversation with you right now."

I grab her, _shake_ her, bloody handprints to her arms, the glass in my palms grinding against her stoney skin. Her cigarette waggles in her mouth and I wonder why she's even smoking. Maybe out of habit.

" _What_ did you just call me? Say my name. Say it!"

I shake her again and she screams in my face.

"Cliff! _Cliff,_ you fucker!"

Please return your seatbacks to their upright and locked position.


	19. Chapter 19

The house is fucking _crawling_ with space monkeys.

It's the first place I immediately run back to after hearing Sharon's bullshit about me being Cliff.

That girl is fucking crazy. She must've took a big dosage of those damn pills before I got to her house. I suppose I should've stayed longer to hear her explanation and help her through the drugs but I freaked out and ran out in search of Cliff myself. _Sick_ of all this bullshit already.

Running through the house, I have to press myself against the walls, trapped in this clockwork of space monkeys. _Planet Cliff._

All of them look the same. All dressed in black. No fingerprints, no fucking expressions. Just lifeless and frozen and in the way. I find a bunch of them huddled around the shitty tv set in the living room again. Watching the five o'clock news through a snowstorm of static. A franchise smoothie bar trashed.

"You fucking idiots, you keep running around trying to blow things up? What do you think is gonna happen if you keep doing this shit?" I yell and they all look at me like I should have seen this coming.

"It's all under control, Sir," one of them says, but I don't know which. It could have been any of them.

"This has gone too far." I fume.

"Whatever you say, Sir."

"It has to stop. _Now!_ All of you, just get the fuck out!" I scream and most of them jump, but not all of them.

"You said you would say that." Wayne stands up from the crowd.

"What the hell are you talking about? I didn't tell you shit!"

"You told us you'd say that too." Randy says.

And I thought _Sharon_ was crazy, these motherfuckers are even worse.

Ignoring them, I just close my eyes and shake my head while running my hand through my hair. "Listen when I find Cliff, we are putting a stop to this shit immediately." I sigh.

"You said you would _definitely_ say that and when you did, it was time to forget about you." Jay says.

Just when I was about to respond, a guy suddenly grabs me from behind while another try's to grip my legs.

I elbow the guy behind me and manage to scramble out of their embrace. I then quickly run to the kitchen to grab a knife and wave it at them as a threat.

They wanna fuck with me? _OK._

"Now listen you stupid fucks, unless you all have a death wish and want to be burnt to a fucking crisp, I suggest you all get the hell out of here by the time I come back up from the basement!" I shout. Veins popping out of my head and neck.

I see most of them sprint to the front door before I even turn to go down the stairs.

Before running down to the shitty basement, I make sure to grab the map of what looks like tonight's target on the kitchen table. Almost sure Cliff will show.

-

I blow up the house. The shed is just a given.

Ten more pounds of kitty litter and the second time's a charm.

At least _this_ time I know why.

-

Cliff finds me on the top floor of the tallest corporate building in town. I knew he would, no matter where I went.

And I don't know why, but it felt like I'd _already_ been here.

For the first time he is clean, free of grease and grime, in clothing that doesn't look four months old. He looks nearly decent, fit for public consumption, and it makes him twice as terrifying. As though all this time he's been masquerading for the sick, banal pleasure of it. He strides towards me and I lift the gun in my hand to his heart level.

"I only have one bullet." I warn him as though he'll care, which he doesn't.

"What the fuck are you _doing_?" he grumbles. He paces in front of me like he's plotting his next move. "I'm really starting to get tired of your bullshit."

" _I_ am not the problem here." I waggle the gun at him and he growls when he tries to go for it, sudden as a snakebite. I press the gun to my chest, square up against my heart, and scowl at him.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you." he cautions, stopping in his tracks.

"You think I won't?"

Cliff exhales as he rolls his eyes to the ceiling. "This has gone way too fucking far Rick. You have got to snap out-"

"You know, _you're_ the only one who calls me that." I interrupt.

Bad decision.

Cliff whirls back and lets his fist fly a million miles an hour before it grinds into my face. The gun clatters across the floor and, through the ringing milky way inside my skull, I can hear him laughing. He sinks a solid fist into my stomach and I collapse to the floor with a wet smack.

"Because you're _mine_ , don't you fucking get that?" Cliff snaps at me, teeth flashing. "A little fucking _piece_ of a greater whole. You're just every meaningless part of my humanity, all smashed up together and tossed out into the world." He stalks around me as I groan and try to roll over, my insides gone liquid. "I was sick of feeling that shit, so I let you go."

"You are fucking insane." I wheeze.

He picks me up and shoves me up against a wall hard enough to leave bruising. My toes dangle inches off the ground.

"No, _you_ are insane!" he yells in my face. "You cannot even begin to fathom what this last year has been like, since you've been gone. I've seen _everything_. Done it _all_. The sort of depravity that one can only eroticize. And _you_?" He frowns with disgust. "You've spent that whole time convincing yourself of this pathetic little life you're living."

He drops me in a limp pile at his feet and if he could spit on me, he would.

"What a fucking waste." he huffs.

"So just fucking kill me!" I shout at the concrete and glance around for the gun. It glitters from a dark corner, light years away.  
Cliff rolls his eyes and straightens his jean jacket.

"It wouldn't do me much good to kill _myself_ , now would it?"


	20. Chapter 20

_..."It wouldn't do me much good to off myself, now would it?"_

I drag myself painfully to my knees. "That makes no sense."

"What about _any_ of this makes sense?" Cliff screams wildly and then grits his teeth, speaking through them. "Let me just lay this down for you, Einstein. Plain and fucking simple. I am _you_. You are _me_. _We_ are one and the _same_." He spits rage.

 _Right_. My broken body is barely holding itself together and I _look_ at him. As unblemished as ever. There's nothing alike about us right now, and yet he's telling me . . .

"But you have a house, you..."

"Rented. In. Your. _Name_." he says deliberately, lifting both eyebrows expectantly, waiting for me to catch up.

“ _You_ started all this demolition cult bullshit!”

“ _We_ did,” Cliff huffs in agitation. "You know, this is a delusion, Rick. _Your_ delusion. I let you go off into the world on the condition that you'd keep your shit together and you've been doing just that. Pretending to live a decent snowflake, materialistic life. But then you started _fucking up_." he spits, irritated with me.

"I've never done anything wrong!" I strain through the blood in my mouth. It's true. I've always been the shining, stinking example of all that is bland and boring and perfect.

"That window to your bedroom didn't just magically _break_ itself." Cliff walks to the gun and kicks it into another corner. Even farther away.

"What? The one that was in my condo? You're blaming me for that?"

"Well, not really. It was the _girl_ who broke the window."

"What girl?" 

I don't remember any girl.

"That call girl you picked up who looked just like _Sharon_ ," he snarls her name. "You didn't go to insomnia group for two weeks and you fucking cracked in half. You brought her home and tried to fuck her and but of course your pathetic ass freaked her out instead. Cried then locked her in and wouldn’t let her leave. She panicked and broke out of there and what do you do? Go _insane_ on an anxiety attack." He’s grimacing with disgust.

"I did _what_?"

"I'm only here because _I_ had to come clean up after you. Why do you think I blew up your condo? How do you think I even _know_ to blow shit up?"

Because _I_ know how to.

" _You_ did that?"

" _We_ did that," Cliff corrects me. "You just got all the glory."

" _Bullshit_ ," I practically gag on blood. "Next you're gonna tell me that we're _both_ fucking Sharon."

"That fucking girl," Cliff rolls his eyes. "We're gonna have to do something about her. She's caused too many problems."

"This isn't her fault." I don't know why I'm defending her. Maybe because I know he'll do something to her if he thinks she's in the way.

"No, this is because of your complete fucking _meltdown_ over her!" Cliff shudders, shaking off the feel of her mouth. "I didn't think it could be possible, but I'm pretty damn convinced you went off and fell in _love_." he scoffs.

"Yeah, I know she's pretty fucking unlovable, but it's not impossible."

"I'm not talking about her. It's _you_. We're not exactly the _warm_ and _fuzzy_ type. Falling in love isn't something we just do."

"You don't fall in love?"

"No. Much less with a lying bitch like that." He sounds disgusted again, like I asked him to drink his own piss.

"You're the one fucking her!" I accuse, throwing explosives into an already raging inferno. Cliff boils over, spewing vexation.

"There is no _me and you_ , Rick!" he howls. "There is only _US_. When I fuck her, _you_ fuck her. When she fucks me, she's fucking _you_. I'm ready for you to get this through your stoney fucking skull, I am not _only_ just your goddamn imaginary friend!"

If he's saying what I think he's saying, everything he's been doing has actually been me all along. Every fight in a deserted parking lot and basement, drowning in delusion and trying to beat it out of myself.

Every kiss.

Every hard, fast fuck.

Every space monkey.

Every club.

I use his moment of self indulgent ranting to re-arm myself. Slide across the floor and scrabble for the gun. I can barely get a good grip on it and I stick it in my mouth.

"Now, you're just pissing me off." Cliff glares, quaking with barely controlled rage. You can't talk around the barrel of a gun. Everything just comes out in vowels so I pull it free, the tip dripping with bloody saliva.

"I don’t need you." I argue.

"Keep telling yourself that, princess."

"I don't believe you!" It hurts my insides, but I shout at him.

Then someone yells...


End file.
